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“Fisher, don’t you want me to get Darcy back?” I asked, trying to bite back the frustration simmering inside me. “She’s being tortured right now. While you’re just standing there.”
Kevin and the other guys were lined up next to Fisher like a barricade, but none of them were quite as intimidating. Without Tristan or Joa
quin here, Fisher was the de facto leader, and I knew that if I could get through to him, the others wouldn’t fight me. I glanced sidelong at Krista. Her white rain jacket was snapped up to her chin, the hood forming a perfect O around her face with the laces pulled taut. She looked like she would rather be anywhere other than here.
“Look, my orders were not to let anyone over the bridge, so I’m not letting anyone over the bridge,” Fisher told me.
“Well, there you go!” Krista said, reaching for my hand. “Let’s go back to my house.”
I snatched my fingers away. An impressive fork of lightning split the sky behind Fisher, and a crack of thunder quickly followed, causing Krista to yelp.
“But I’m not just anyone,” I replied, clenching my fists, the skin on my hands so raw it tightened to near cracking. “I’m the person Pete finally talked to.”
Fisher narrowed his eyes and reset his stance, looking down his nose at me like he was the commanding officer and I was some pissant private challenging his authority.
“Right. And how am I supposed to know that for sure, exactly?” he asked. “How do I know you’re not just making this up?”
Now I glared at Krista. It was way past time for her to speak up. But she just looked at me, her blue eyes wide like a startled rabbit’s.
“Tell him, Krista!” I demanded. “Tell him what you heard.”
Krista looked at the ground. “He said that if we opened the door, the innocents would be released,” she mumbled. “But I don’t get why it has to be you, Rory!” she whined, suddenly full of life. “Can’t we send one of the older Lifers over? Someone who doesn’t have friends or a family or—”
“We don’t have time to start looking for a willing guinea pig!” I interjected. “Don’t you get it? It’s my family in there. My best friend. We have to do this now.”
A few of the other guys heard this and started to whisper, looking at us with a new sort of respect. Possibly awe.
Suddenly, Krista’s face hardened into a sort of resolute mask of fear. “Fine. Then I’m coming with you.”
“What?” Fisher, Kevin, and I said as one.
Krista cleared her throat and spoke up. “There’s no way I’m going to stay back here and explain to Tristan how I let her go alone,” she said. “Dealing with the fallout from that would be way worse than anything the Shadowlands has to offer.”
“Wow, Krista. I’m impressed,” Fisher said, looking her up and down.
Krista lifted her shoulders. “She’s my best friend. Like my sister. If she goes, I guess I have to go.”
Kevin turned his back to us and murmured something in Fisher’s ear. Then Fisher turned his back on us, and the two of them got into it, whisper-fighting something fierce until Fisher finally shouted, “Fine!”
I felt Krista tense up. “Fine what?” I asked.
“Fine, you guys can go. But I’m coming with you. Safety in numbers, right?”
He stepped aside, forming a hole in the line between him and Kevin. The bridge loomed before us, the steel girders seeming huge at the foot of the bridge before they tapered up and disappeared inside the swirling gray mist. My throat went dry, and the mixture of fear and adrenaline coursing through me made my head swim. But I forced myself to walk toward the seam where the muddy road met the steel ramp, and I didn’t look back, though I could hear Krista and Fisher behind me.
I stopped in front of the wall of mist. Eighteen paces and I’d see Darcy again. Eighteen paces and I’d have my dad back. And Aaron and Jennifer and everyone else who was needlessly suffering. Fisher stepped up to my left, Krista to my right.
“I should warn you guys, it’s not pleasant in there,” I said. “There are voices. Whispers. And something kept trying to grab me. I don’t know who or what, but…it wasn’t fun.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Krista said.
“Don’t worry,” Fisher told her, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “I got your back.”
I took a deep breath. “Ready?”
Fisher looked over his shoulder and gave Kevin a nod. Kevin lifted his walkie to his lips and spoke. “Joaquin. Come in, Joaquin. Rory, Krista, and Fish are going over the bridge. They say they know how to open the portal to the Shadowlands. You might want to get your ass up here.”
“Fisher!” Krista and I scolded.
